March Matt-ness 2016 - Stanford University

Arab world. A songbook written in Cairo in 1840 contains the lyrics of over 350 of these songs, providingevidence that the muwashshah had become the dominant form of art song in the eastern Arab world.Performances commonly featured suites of a dozen or more songs, all set to the same melodic mode( maqam ). Each suite would start with songs in the weightiest/heaviest rhythms, and progress through aseries of ever lighter rhythms, ending finally with one or more songs set in lively 6/8 rhythms. Whilemuwashshah songs remain beloved for many today, newer song forms (for example, the ughniya andmodern pop genres) have largely taken over in the repertoire of most performing artists. Jalla Man QadSawwarak is set in maqam Bayyati in a 7 beat rhythm. This song has been widely recorded by famedSyrian singers including Sabri Mudallal and Sabah Fakhri.

c. A portion of the song Inta ‘Umri (“You are my life”), composed by Muhammad ‘Abd al Wahhab(c.1905 1991) for the superstar Egyptian singer, Umm Kulthum (c.1904 1975). Premiered in Cairo in 1964,this song created a huge sensation since it brought together the talents of the two most famous 20th centuryArab artists for the first time.Umm Kulthum enjoyed a career that spanned over five decades. Starting with village performances as achild, she moved to the big city, Cairo, in 1924 to further her career. Within a few years, she was recognizedas the premier singer of her day, a reputation that continued to grow exponentially throughout the rest of herlife.‘Abd al Wahhab subsequently composed nine other songs for Umm Kulthum. Inta ‘Umri consists of foursections: an initial refrain followed by three verses, each verse ending with a return to the refrain. Tonight,we perform only the song’s instrumental introduction and the much loved refrain.Ensemble Feedback NetworksEnsembleCREATE Ensemble Feedback Networks is a structured musical improvisation, where a variable number of playersexcite and control a sparsely connected feedback delay network. We have been working with these ideasfor the past 2 years, including performances at the 2015 New Interfaces for Musical Expression conferencein Baton Rouge and at the UCSB AlloSphere in 2016.Each of our unique personal instruments manipulates a received audio input and incorporates it into theoutput. A digital patching matrix creates various connection topologies among the ensemble by mixing theinstruments’ outputs to form each instrument’s input. Towards transparency, we present visualization ofconnection topologies and of each instrument’s input/output (including spectrogram and estimates of I/Ovolume differential for quick and smooth timescales) to the audience.

Topologies with loops create feedback and can seem like a single group instrument whose behavior vitallydepends on each performer’s actions. As an ensemble, we explore several issues this raises. How dohumans cybernetically adapt to these dynamic topologies? How to adapt our personal dynamics to theradical democratization of everybody’s sound going through everybody’s instruments and each memberhaving a vital role with (some) total control at all times? What is the relationship between managing acomplex system versus being managed by the system? How much control can we have over adensely connected system? How do these challenges affect our musicianship?UnducracklelationsMatthew Wright and Lee Heuermann The opening of this improvisation explores the timbral (noise) and spatial possibilities of the oud and voice –how they clash or blend with each other, as they both have the capabilities of being both percussive andfluid. They develop various forms of undulations that are inherent in both the oud and voice, shifting fromtremolos to pulsations to a sound mass with emergent melodies. The piano then juxtaposes the oud’sopen string tuning with contrasting harmonies.LimnJohn MacCallumLimn consists of two parts: a duo for flute and cello, written for Stacey Pelinka and Leighton Fong of the LeftCoast Chamber Ensemble; and a live electronic part premiered at the SummerWorks Performance Festivalin Toronto as part of a collaboration called Synchronism with choreographer Teoma Naccarato.In the flute and cello duo, the two performers negotiate long, gradual changes in tempo that diverge fromeach other from the very start of the piece. As they are learning the piece, the musicians rely on click tracksto keep their parts aligned, but ultimately play without them in concert. The slow shifts in tempo create aperformance context in which the two players cannot synchronize in the ways that they have grown to befamiliar with. Instead, they must negotiate the dynamically changing relationship between their part and thatof the other, dispensing with the temporal relationships prescribed in the score and instead relying onsituated action in the exploration of a more rich notion of what it means to play together. This work owesmuch to Matt Wright’s initial explorations of tempo curving software in collaboration with Edmund Campionand myself at CNMAT.The audio drawn from Synchronism consists of traces from a series of intimate, one on one encounters inwhich Naccarato and a participant, in an enclosed space away from public view, place electronicstethoscopes and vibrotactile transducers on each other’s bodies, stimulating sites of observation andpulsation as they negotiate and explore issues of mutual trust, consent and boundaries. The stethoscopetracks are manipulated and obscured, and then projected outwards to the public. In the concert version, wehear recordings of an anonymous encounter between two people, extracted from the original bodies andenvironment, and redistributed in a new, shared context.improvised blinky codeCharlie Roberts In this live coding performance, I create musical patterns that are dynamically annotated by the codingenvironment. The source code becomes a dancing document as ever changing annotations provide thepotential for improved audience understanding of the algorithms at play. The performance is given in the

live coding environment Gibber (http://gibber.cc), which was created for my dissertation; Matt providedvaluable insight, testing, and collaboration throughout Gibber’s development as one of my committeemembers at UC Santa Barbara. Accordingly, he is solely to blame for any typographical errors that mayoccur during the course of this performance.A Drash, A Narrative, and A PrayerMatthew Wright and John Schott [John Schott writes:] The music Matt and I have made together over almost twenty years has taken manyforms, and challenges and rewards me in a way different from other collaborations. It seems to provoke inme fundamental questions of how music is organized and experienced. Usually at the beginning of eachproject, the very atoms of musical experience notes, pulse, melody, rhythm present themselves to me asif we had barely met, and some very basic paths to travel begin to appear. Often this takes the form of mesaying “Could it do this ?” Matt thinks for a moment and then begins programming. Each time is different, butwith a strong through line: our shared devotion to making music, being “in the moment”, and creating beautythat surprises us.Never (2010) in three parts [7:30] Curtis Roads Never , a piece in three parts ( Never never, Never again, Never more ), is a sequel to my composition Now(2003). It stands as an ode to what could not be: the imaginary. The work began as an exploration ofhigher order granulation processes, i.e., regranulations of previously granulated textures. Specifically, Neveris the result of a third order granulation process, being a regranulation of Now, which was itself aregranulation of Volt air, part III (2003). The granulation process was, however, merely a starting point forcomposition. I then edited the granulated textures in detail over a long period to make the finished work.Never is not only the product of recycling of pre existing material, it is also to a large extent made out ofreplications of parts of itself. That is, in building a basic skeleton for all three movements I used up all theoriginal granular material. However, it was obvious that I would need more sound material to complete thepiece. Thus I began to extract fragments from the skeleton–both small and large–to create new sounds bymeans of various transformations. The final work is replete with internal redundancies, replications ofmaterial rearranged so as not to be literal repetitions.

ABOUT THE ARTISTSMark Applebaum , Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Composition at Stanford University. His solo, chamber, choral,orchestral, operatic, and electroacoustic work has been performed throughout North and South America, Europe,Australia, Africa, and Asia, including notable commissions from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the FrommFoundation, the Kronos Quartet, and the Vienna Modern Festival. Many of his pieces are characterized bychallenges to the conventional boundaries of musical ontology: works for three conductors and no players, a concertofor florist and orchestra, pieces for instruments made of junk, notational specifications that appear on the faces ofcustom wristwatches, works for an invented sign language choreographed to sound, amplified Dadaist rituals, achamber work comprised of obsessive page turns, and a 72 foot long graphic score displayed in a museum andaccompanied by no instructions for its interpretation. His TED talk has been seen by more than one million viewers.Applebaum is also an accomplished jazz pianist and builds electroacoustic sound sculptures out of junk, hardware,and found objects. At Stanford Applebaum is the founding director of [sic]—the Stanford Improvisation Collective.He serves on the board of Other Minds and as a trustee of Carleton College.Edmund Campion is currently Professor of Music Composition and Director at the Center for New Music and AudioTechnologies (CNMAT) at UC Berkeley. He has received the American Rome Prize, the Lili Boulanger Prize, ThePaul Fromm Award at Tanglewood, and most recently, the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship given by the AmericanAcademy in Rome. Recent commissions include the 2011 Commande d’etat for Wavelike and Diverse , written for LesthPercussion des Strasbourg and released on the ensemble's 50 anniversary Universal CD collection; Auditory Fiction(2011) , commissioned by Société Générale for Radio France; Small Wonder (The Butterfly Effect) (2012) ,commissioned by the Serge Koussevitzky Foundation for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players; AuditoryFiction II (2014) , written for the ECO Ensemble for the Venice Music Biennale. In 2012, while Composer inResidence with the Santa Rosa Symphony, Campion was commissioned for the The Last Internal CombustionEngine , written for full orchestra, Kronos Quartet and electronics. Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chroniclecalled the piece “a vivid and richly imagined concerto.” Last year, the famed Ensemble Intercontemporainco commissioned Campion and audiovisual artist Kurt Hentschläger for the 25 minute, Cluster X .( http://edmundcampion.com/ ) ( http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/ ).Briana Di Mara has been playing violin since age 6. She was trained in classical music with the Suzuki Method andhas since gone on to study a variety of traditional styles including Irish, English, Greek, Turkish, Persian, Afghan, andArabic. She has been influenced by master musicians from all corners of the world, and this has harmoniouslyblended into her own unique style on the violin. She has performed and recorded with numerous artists, includingStellamara, Moh Alileche, Aywah, Diana Strong and Myra Joy, Silk Road Caravan, La Ruya, Faisal Zedan, GaryHaggerty, Melita Silberstein, and Daniel Fríes. These projects have led her to perform in a wide variety of musicalvenues, theaters and festivals all across California and beyond. It is a privilege to share the music that is food for hersoul.Fernando Rincón Estrada is a Colombian composer based in Santa Barbara, California. His work is focused mainlyon chamber music performance involving acoustic and mixed media performances. Rhythm and timbre are recurrentmaterials through his compositional work, and presently both sound spatialization and microtonality are researchinterests for the development of his creative work as well. At the mo performing music with multiple, independent,smoothly varying tempos, building on and extending earlier work by Matt Wright, Edmund Campion, Ali Momeni, andDavid Wessel. This work resulted in his composition Aberration (2010) for percussion trio, the recording of which wassupported by a grant from the American Composer’s Forum, and The Delicate Texture of Time (2012 13) for eightplayers commissioned by the Eco Ensemble with a grant from the Mellon Foundation. In addition to his interest inpolytemporal music, MacCallum’s compositional work is heavily reliant on technology both as a compositional tooland as an integral aspect of the performance of a piece. His works often employ carefully constrained algorithms thatare allowed to evolve differently and yet predictably each time they are performed. John holds degrees from theUniversity of California, Berkeley (Ph.D. in Music Composition), McGill University (M.M. in Composition), and theUniversity of the Pacific (B.M. in Composition/Theory).Percussionist Loren Mach is passionate about the arts as they relate to our 21st century world and all who inhabit it.A graduate of the Oberlin and Cincinnati Conservatories of Music, he has premiered countless solo, chamber, and

orchestral works. Mach is a member of Eco ensemble, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Worn ChamberEnsemble, and co founder of Rootstock Percussion. He often performs with the San Francisco Symphony, many Bayarea symphony and opera orchestras, or in the pit of hit Broadway shows like Wicked. But Mach prefers making newmusic in more intimate settings with groups like San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Left Coast ChamberEnsemble, Empyrean Ensemble, Earplay, and sfSound Group. In recent summers he has performed at the CabrilloFestival of Contemporary Music and was guest artist with Dawn Upshaw and eighth blackbird at the Ojai MusicFestival. Mach’s other passions involve our fundamental relationship to food as a form of communion with others andour interconnectedness with the natural world around us.Scott Marcus teaches in the Music Department at UCSB, where he founded and directs the UCSB Middle EastEnsemble (of which Matt was a happy member 2008 15). He studied Middle Eastern music at UCLA

PROGRAM Saturday March 12 th Taqasim (2015) Matt Wright (oud and computer) Three pieces of Arabic art music Ali Paris (vocals and qanoun), Briana Di Mara (violin), Scott Marcus (ney flute), Matt Wright (oud and electric guitar), and Faisal Zedan (percussion)